Wednesday, January 19, 2011

I’m reading Edmond Morris’ book “Colonel Roosevelt”. While Teddy was always a hero of mine, I was surprised by how many of my political opinions were shaped by his actions.

What particularly interested me was that Roosevelt did not consider his positions so much political as ethical. Creating a more level playing field for small business faced with the scale of the emerging corporations and holding businesses accountable for failures to protect their workers from the dangers of the mechanized factories then being build was more about honesty and fairness than a political view.

It’s fascinating to me that we are seeing many of the same complaints about “big business” today that we read about in histories of that time. Are the complaints the cause of the movement to remove many of the “square deal” restrictions on big business that Roosevelt championed or are the complaints the result of the removal of those regulations?

Perhaps we are living through the natural demonstration that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.